Strong Nuclear Force in Cold Antihydrogen : Helium Collisions

• We calculate cross sections for elastic scattering and annihilation in antihydrogen-helium collisions at low energies. The calculations are based on the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, and incorporate the effects of the strong interaction through a scattering length approach. We find that the strong nuclear force not only causes significant annihilation, but also cannot be neglected in the elastic channel. In the zero energy limit we obtain the scattering length a=−7.69−3.80i a.u. for ground state antihydrogen-helium collisions. Annihilation is found to dominate over elastic scattering up to a temperature about 3 K. Loosely bound metastable antihydrogen-helium states are also investigated, and it is found that a number of relatively long-lived states with up to three units of angular momentum exist.

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